Gale is a global provider of research and digital learning resources. The company is based in

Farmington Hills, Michigan Farmington Hills is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. Part of the affluent suburbs northwest of Detroit, Farmington Hills is the second most-populated city in Oakland County, after Troy, with a population of 83,986 at the 2 ...

, west of

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

. It has been a division of

Cengage Cengage Group is an American educational content, technology, and services company for the higher education, K-12, professional, and library markets. It operates in more than 20 countries around the world.(Jun 27, 2014Global Publishing Leaders ...

since 2007. The company, formerly known as Gale Research and the Gale Group, is active in research and educational publishing for

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...

, and school libraries, and businesses. The company is known for its full-text magazine and newspaper databases, Gale OneFile (formerly known as Infotrac), and other online databases subscribed by libraries, as well as multi-volume reference works, especially in the areas of

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

, and

social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of s ...

. Founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 1954 by Frederick Gale Ruffner Jr., the company was acquired by the International Thomson Organization (later the

Thomson Corporation The Thomson Corporation was one of the world's largest information companies. It was established in 1989 following a merger between International Thomson Organisation Ltd (ITOL) and Thomson Newspapers. In 2008, it purchased Reuters Group to fo ...

) in 1985 before its 2007 sale to Cengage.

History

In 1998, Gale Research merged with Information Access Company and Primary Source Media, two companies also owned by Thomson, to form the Gale Group. Thomson has acquired Information Access Company (publisher of

InfoTrac InfoTrac is a family of full-text databases of content from academic journals and general magazines, of which the majority are targeted to the English-speaking North American market. As is typical of online proprietary databases, various forms ...

) in 1995 and Primary Source Media (formerly named Research Publications) in 1979. In 1999, Thomson Gale acquired Macmillan Library Reference (including

Scribner's Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing American authors including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan Ra ...

Reference, Thorndike Press, Schirmer, Twayne Publishers, and G. K. Hall) from Pearson (which had acquired it from

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publi ...

in 1998;

Macmillan USA Macmillan Inc. is a defunct American book publishing company. Originally established as the American division of the British Macmillan Publishers, the two were later separated and acquired by other companies, with the remnants of the original Am ...

was purchased by Simon & Schuster in 1994). In 2000 it acquired the

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

-based K. G. Saur Verlag, but then sold it to

Walter de Gruyter Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. History The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...

in 2006. On October 25, 2006, Thomson Corporation announced that it intended to wholly divest the Thomson Learning division, because, in the words of Thomson CEO Richard Harrington, "it does not fit with our long-term strategic vision." Thomson has said that it expected this sale to generate approximately $5 billion. Thomson Learning was bought by a private equity consortium consisting of

Apax Partners Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of December 2017, the firm, including its ...

and

OMERS Capital Partners The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) is a Canadian public pension fund, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. OMERS is a defined benefit, jointly sponsored, multi-employer public pension plan created in 1962 by Ontario provinci ...

for $7.75 billion and the name was changed from Thomson Learning to

Cengage Learning Cengage Group is an American educational content, technology, and services company for the higher education, K-12, professional, and library markets. It operates in more than 20 countries around the world.(Jun 27, 2014Global Publishing Leader ...

on July 24, 2007. Patrick C. Sommers was president of Gale from October 22, 2007, until he retired in 2010.

Products

Gale produces hundreds of products, such as Gale Academic OneFile,

Biography and Genealogy Master Index The Biography and Genealogy Master Index (BGMI) was a printed reference index, and is currently a proprietary database published by the Gale Research Company Gale is a global provider of research and digital learning resources. The company is base ...

, General OneFile, General Reference Center, Sabin Americana (based on Sabin's '' Bibliotheca Americana''), and World History Collection. Gale print imprints include the reference brands Primary Source Media, Scholarly Resources Inc., Schirmer Reference, St. James Press, The TAFT Group and Twayne Publishers, among others. Five Star Publishing is Gale's fiction imprint, with hundreds of books in print in the Western, Romance, Mystery and Science Fiction & Fantasy genres. Gale also sells into the

K–12 K–12, from kindergarten to 12th grade, is an American English expression that indicates the range of years of publicly supported primary and secondary education found in the United States, which is similar to publicly supported school grade ...

market with several imprints, including U·X·L, Greenhaven Press, KidHaven Press, Lucent Books, and others. Gale also owns large print publishers Christian Large Print and Wheeler Publishing.

References

External links

Gale website
;Gale-owned sites and services
Gale Directory Library
– dozens of print directories on a digital platform
Books & Authors
– indexed database of fiction and nonfiction book titles {{Authority control 1954 establishments in Michigan American companies established in 1954 Book publishing companies based in Michigan Cengage Companies based in Oakland County, Michigan Bibliographic database providers Commercial digital libraries Online publishing companies of the United States Publishing companies established in 1954 1985 mergers and acquisitions American digital libraries

History

Products

See also

References

External links